In this episode we finish updating our electronics workbench with a 50″ screen which we are going to connect to our Quad core PC with USB spectrum analyzer & oscilloscope, along with our Raspberry Pi and Chrome Cast.

In this episode we will use the free InkScape application to convert a raster image (PNG in this case) into a vector and than to GCode to cut on our laser cutter. Worth note is this will also work with other raster image formats such as JPG, GIF and others. Also this is a workflow video so we will talk about how we several programs to create a “workflow” which gets us to our end product. In addition, while this will cut on the laser cutter, we could also run the same code and mill this on the CNC machine as well.

In this episode we will look at configuring the CNC Proto-Shield for the Ardunio and GRBL for the laser cutter. For more information on the CNC Proto-Shield click this link, also for the configuration page click here. This has turned out to be a great little board for the money and highly recommend it for any type of CNC project which your working on!

Appears there is a delay in GRBL (v0.9) with the issue of the M03 spindle direction command GRBL will delay its movement to allow time for the spindle to spin down, reverse and spin back up. So instead of using M03/M04 for rapids, we have switched to using PWM (Pulse Width Modulation) using S0 to set to the lowest level (basically off) and S1000 for full power.

In this episode we will fire up the Probotix Fireball v90 with the 2 Watt laser and cut some stuff. We are using the gcode from the J-Tech Photonic Inkscape plug in bu the machine seems to be waiting for several minutes after reach the start position in line 12. Below is the Gcode:

In this episode we will look at converting a small 28BYJ-45 stepper motor from unipolar format to bipolar to increase the torque output for various projects more information can be found at this link ( amzn.to/1guHOup ).